The Morning GIF: Muhammad on Mars

Here at the Daily Dot, we swap GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you in. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.

Muhammad Ali, that is.

Chicago’s south side, 1966: A trepidacious teenage boy implores his idol for an interview day after day. Finally the star agrees, and possibly the best fan interview in high school radio history is born.

That is how Michael Aisner met Muhammad Ali. Ali not only gave this little white kid a dose of classic Ali, including a fanciful sidebar about a trip to Mars to fight the Green Giant. He said he’d KO the biggest, baddest Martian there ever was (well, who would doubt it?) and he’d be there and back by about 1986. There must be a lot of people who wished they could have been off-planet for the years 1966-1986. But I digress.

When Aisner realized he’d failed to tape the Martian escapade, he had to ask Ali to repeat the spontaneous riff, which he did.

The Champ is also a trouper.

Aisner donated the recording to Blank on Blank, a nonprofit which brings to light hidden or lost celebrity interviews of particular interest. Tumblr’s Storyboard has created a fanciful Vimeo dramatizing the story, and artist Colin Raff at ZBags has turned it into a short-form GIF tale featured on Reblorg. Tumblr is nothing if not cross-promotional. So here, we present what we believe to be the definitive GIF of Muhammad Ali fighting a boxing match on Mars.

For stats junkies: the Storyboard has 1,367 notes, the Reblorg post 170, and 134 so far on ZBags.